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I have the same issue - but I've stopped getting stressed about it.

I've noticed that when my site disappears it comes back stronger a couple of days later. I can't say that I'm substaintially changing the site but as a Moz user it's slightly improving all the time and I've been removing spammy back links. It feels like Google spiders the site and is shocked at the improvements and kills it for a couple of days.

According to Moz my anchor text for 'balloon' is from 3 root domains and 4 links containing anchor text?

Thanks Peter

I've reached out to 100 webmasters and had 2 reply…… so I'll try the disavow option.

Thanks for the link.

Hi All

If Kelly did want to remove a link from a directory - how would she do this?

Assuming she doesn't have passwords to the site and the spammy webmaster won't reply to any removal request?

OK - thanks for that.

As I've reached out to 100 back links and had 2 replies - I think I'll concentrate on the disavow option although I don't know what back links are causing the problem.

I still get plenty of orders from the long tail ("balloon printing", "Balloon Arches" & "Printed Balloons") - but I did enjoy the number 1 slot for 'balloon' while it lasted.

Thanks again.

Right - got it, that makes sense.

When you say over-optimized I guess you mean all links pointing at my site have the word 'balloon' in the anchor text. I've tried wiring to the link owners but none of them reply and none of them remove the links.

In my Google webmaster tools I don't have any penalties showing for back links so I can't submit a request to show my efforts.

Can I fix this or is the domain name damaged forever?

Thanks for the prompt reply.

Regarding Penguin - I defiantly had some keyword stuffing issues which were fixed about 8 weeks ago and the site has gone from page 8 to page 5 (for a search on 'balloon'). But if the whole site was guilty why would the contact page rank above the homepage and why does it rank OK for 'balloons'?

The page title/anchor text is: Balloons, Balloon Printing & Helium Gas

Hi Mozers

I have traded from my website balloon.co.uk for over 10 years. For a long while the site ranked first for the word 'balloon' across the UK on google.co.uk (first out of 41 million).

Around the time Penguin launched the site began to drop and currently sits on about page 5. What's confusing is that for a search on 'balloons' ('s' on the end of balloon) it ranks 2nd in the location of Birmingham where I'm based. That's 2nd in the real search rather than a map local search.

But - if I search 'balloon' from the location of Birmingham my contact page ranks 5th: http://www.balloon.co.uk/contact.htm but the home page ranks nowhere.

So - it's gone from ranking 1st nationally to ranking nowhere with my contact page ranking above the home page (which is a generic word domain).

Any ideas?